"Sequoia Grove Shuttle at Wawona" Wawona Transportation Tip by Karnubawax

The lower grove of giant sequoias is easily accessable from the parking area, but to get to the upper grove you have to either hike uphill or take the "tour." The tour is just an open trolley towed by an International Harvester pickup, with the driver making comments and pointing out noteworth trees along the way.

While the trip was a little bumpy, what was worse was that the "tour" was not paricularly informative or even interesting. The tour guide did her best with the limited "material" she had to go on. The trip up took maybe 30 minutes, where we stopped briefly at the Mariposa Grove Museum - a dark, decrepit log cabin with thoroughly unintersting exhibits and one VERY bored ranger. Here you had the choice of staying on the tour and going back down, or getting off and hiking the 2-mile trail to the lower grove. I chose to do the latter, and the hike own was pretty - though somebody needs to do some cleaning up of the 'detritis' - the sheer amount of dead wood and debrs on the forest floor really detracts from the majesty of the sequoias.

Still, the "tour" would have been worth doing, except that...

1. Oweing to the aforementioned fire, the Grove was packed, and the first tour I could get on was 2 hours after I purchased my ticket, and...

2. That ticket cost $11!

I would highy recommend that you skip this tour. You can walk up if you're in halfway decent shape, and there's plenty to see in the lower grove if you just want to take it easy.

Mode: AROUND
Type: Bus